Frequently Asked Questions

What is Headlight?

Headlight is a talent assessment platform. We help tech employers make
better hiring decisions by allowing candidates to demonstrate their
skills and abilities via take-home assignments. Our goal is to help
leaders identify the right talent for their organization and let skilled
professionals show the world what they’re capable of.

What is a take-home assignment?

Take-home assignments are short projects that require candidates to use
skills and perform tasks that are relevant to the job and are done
“on your own time” rather than in-person. For engineers, this might
mean writing a small program or refactoring a piece of code. For product
managers, it might mean coming up with a new feature for an existing
product or developing a go-to-market strategy.

How does Headlight work?

Employers can easily setup one or more take-home assignments for their
candidates, or choose from our growing library, and send them individually
to candidates. Assignments can have due dates and optional time limits to
ensure consistency. Candidates get individual landing pages and don’t
see assignment details until they start.

How do take-home assignments compare with interviews?

Take-home assignments allow employers to see how a candidate can
understand, diagnose, and solve problems independently—similar to how
they might in a job. Interviews are generally conducted as a real-time
conversation over the phone or in-person where candidates respond to
questions about their work and themselves.

The truth is, interviews are not always the best way to evaluate
someone’s ability. Research has found that interviewing people,
especially without a rigorous and structured format, is a poor
predictor of future performance. [1]

Take-home assignments are a type of work sample, which has been shown
to a much stronger predictor of success on the job than interviews [2].
They can be given to multiple candidates at the same time, and allow
employers to focus less on how impressively a candidate can talk, and
more on what a candidate can actually do.